Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  Ages ago, Geneva residents worshiped in the vine-covered church beside the cemetery, but now the chapel stands a desolate, historical colonial marker, long forgotten. For years, weeds and vines overran the cemetery. Troubled by the ground’s unkempt state, Tessa had wooden crosses and rotten fences surrounding the burial site, replaced with granite headstones, weeping-angel effigies, and a black wrought-iron gate. She strove to preserve historical edifices. The old gatehouse and adjoining archway into the graveyard remain colonial antiquities. At Tessa’s directive, Twilight’s tireless and devoted caretaker, who lives on the property near the inn and a relic himself, tends the sacred grounds once a month.

  Skylar’s gut clenches when the large, granite mausoleum, her father’s desired resting place, comes into view, a family crypt that will enshrine her own skeletal remains one day. It’s frightening knowing she will rest forsaken with the others. She shudders, wiping the idea from her mind. Only once has she visited Ian’s grave, believing his soul rests not there but inside Twilight Ends.

  Again, a figure shifts among the headstones. Sky stops the bimmer with a skid. A woman with raven, waist-length hair walks fluidly through the trees, an eerie sight in ebbing light. She kneels, raking leaves from gravestones, clutching something in her left hand. Maybe flowers, though it’s uncommon for Twilight’s guests to wander the private cemetery with offerings for the dead.

  Through the coppice, the woman leans over the grave, her youthful features illusory as she places blossoms on the tombstone. Mesmerized by the scene, Sky opens the car door for a better view. The door-ajar warning chimes, alerting the woman to her feet with amazing litheness. Sky exits the car, strolls toward the road’s edge with a falter.

  “Hello,” Sky says, growing closer.

  When her whole figure and startling face emerge through the thicket, Sky freezes, wide-eyed. The set of her dark-brown eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, and tan complexion, dewy with youth, is the spitting image of a younger Tessa.

  No, it can’t be Tessa. She looks no older than 19.

  Although the woman is standing still, her form seems to fluctuate in place. An illusory image from passing clouds. A niggle of doubt slows Sky’s strides near the incline above the soggy knoll. She leans on a tree, setting her palm on the damp, rough trunk for support. Is she a relative or cousin visiting Twilight? No, Tessa never mentioned her. When distant family stop over for special occasions, Tessa always gathers the immediate family at the inn.

  “Do I know you?” Sky asks.

  The woman moves back.

  “No, please… don’t go,” Skylar says with a waver in her voice, unable to take her eyes from the woman drifting motions, believing it’s an illusion created by the maxi-dress beneath the masculine leather jacket. “Are you a guest at Twilight?”

  The woman stares without a word, unmoving.

  Pointing up ahead, Sky asks once more. “Are you staying at Twilight Ends?”

  The woman smiles. Her lips open and curve with silent words.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  The air shifts as the woman lowers, then raises her head. Her entire body heaves as though breath flowed through every limb at once. She lifts her gaze to Skylar and mouths seven inaudible words.

  When a hum intensifies in Sky’s ear, she gasps and clasps her mouth with a sound she knows too well, freezing in disbelief.

  As if sensing Sky’s alarm, the woman shakes her head. She speaks muted words with an anomaly of dark, light, and transparent expressions waning as she spreads her arms wide across the cemetery, flowing toward the family mausoleum.

  With her eyes affixed to her hand floating back to her chest, Sky senses compassion in the woman’s smiling eyes. She reads her lips, capturing only the last word, “… here.”

  The woman waves and strolls toward the trees, dispersing light waning through the coppice toward the inn.

  Sky stands frozen, wide-eyed, hands trembling over her clasped mouth, alarm brewing in her mind. Clouds drift overhead, pulling her gaze toward the animating silver wolf etched on the headstone where the woman had tarried moments before. A grave that belongs to Mingin (Gray Wolf), a warrior Tessa spoke of often with affection. Dim beams fork through trees, illuming the twigs with crimson berries that the woman placed on Mingin’s headstone.

  Sprigs of Winterberry Holly… Tessa’s favorite holiday adornment.

  A frightful thought thrusts her toward the car, and sets her speeding toward Twilight. Past the clearing, Sky’s gaze skims the front lawn, beyond sculpted yew hedges lining the garden for the vanishing woman, even though her intuition perceived the truth in the cemetery. The knot in her gut tightens when Cristal Whelan’s crimson SUV appears alongside Twyla’s royal-blue Hyundai beside the house. After her daughter’s mysterious text message and the ominous sensation, she senses a serious event because Cristal and her husband visit the inn only for special occasions.

  Sky slides the bimmer around the side of the home, remembering Tessa’s words from her last visit, words she’d spoken as if in farewell that had raised Sky’s alarm, “Sky, Twilight will always be your home. Never sell it at any cost or let others steal it from you. And they will try.” She’d paused. Sky was sure she’d enlighten her, but she’d only urged, “Please take exceptional care of Twilight, as your father and I have.”

  Since Ian’s death, Tessa mentions her will often, but Sky always changed the conversation, reluctant to discuss a hard-to-swallow topic. She can’t imagine life without Tessa’s daily phone calls, sagacious advice, and her mellifluous laughter that has always soothed her edges. Her loved one’s mortality is a painful reality she ignores, trying to cherish every living moment.

  Rooted with paralyzing dread to the car seat, an ominous warning burrows inside her consciousness. The bitter disquiet she’s felt since morning settles in her core. She grabs the half-full bottle of water from her bag and swigs down the contents. Just as she grips her purse and turns her head sideways, Old George, the caretaker, emerges atop the large lawn vacuum sucking leaves from Twilight’s meandering paths.

  The sight elicits a childhood memory, those rare memories a familiar image, taste or sound triggers. On an overcast autumn day, much like today, she’d sat beside the dining-room window and watched Old George, the caretaker, clean the yard as she’d drank apple cider with pie made from pumpkins she and Tessa had picked from a local orchard. From the window, she saw a peculiar funnel of leaves around Tessa’s favorite maple tree. The caretaker climbed off the sweeper and strode to the maple. Mystik, Tessa’s gray-short-haired cat with cyan eyes, popped out of nowhere, slipped from the caretaker's reach, leaped on a mound of foliage and zipped toward the house, bell jingling from her neck.

  If cats could grin, she’d swear Mystik did that day. The image had garnered a chuckle, even now. She’ll never forget the way leaves dropped straight down when Mystik appeared. She reasoned that the wind created the funnel, but never had she seen foliage plummet, not float, to the ground.

  Tessa insisted Mystik’s litter should have the same name with a successive number. Her reason remains unclear, but the family never challenged her logic. Most of the kittens she’d given to friends, but she always kept one around the inn. Mystik One, Tessa’s favorite, received when she was 17, lived for 20 years. Now, 43 years and many litters later, Mystik Five is Twyla’s favorite.

  Sky’s gaze bounces around the yard for the mysterious woman, desperate to prove she’s a guest on an autumn stroll around the inn. “She’s not a guest!” Her rational mind screams, recognizing the dreamlike scene in the cemetery for what it was, a visitation. The hum as the woman spoke affirmed the truth.

  Skylar steps out of the car into October’s crisp air as the leaf vacuum eats another rustling pile of foliage. She hastens on to the wrap-around porch and steps inside Twilight, catching the part-time clerk’s rueful expression behind the tall, mahogany greeting desk. A student Tessa hired from nearby Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

  “Hi, S
herry. Where’s Tessa?”

  “Sky, she’s… Tessa’s…” she stammers then stops with a stricken expression. “They’re in the family suite,” she says in a bleak tone.

  There’s no need to ask what’s wrong because the answer lies in her face, her eyes, her unfinished sentences a moment before, and now her silence.

  At once, Sky’s legs are liquid. She’s always imagined this heartbreaking moment, although she’d tried hard to erase the painful images. Whenever she’d heard of friends losing a parent, she’d pictured Tessa’s last moments unfolding with a phone call from the hospital or, worse, one of Twilight’s staff after discovering Tessa slumped in a chair, assuming her to be asleep. She’d pictured a frantic dash to the emergency room, finding Tessa waiting on her last breath to say I love you, just before her eyes closed for ever. Now, from the look on Sherry’s face, she fears she won’t have the chance to tell Tessa how much she loves her.

  Skylar climbs the grand Victorian staircase to the second floor. With every step, the home’s cavernous silence stirs an excruciating recognition she’s felt since dawn. The home is void of her essence. Her soul recognizes the absence. That same innate intuition or connection a mother has with a child she’s always had with Tessa. When Tessa’s favorite chair emerges empty beside the family suite fireplace, Sky’s intuition jabs stronger. She pauses, swallows the lump constricting her throat, fearing the silent room ahead.

  Sky takes several breaths as she nears the bedroom door, halting when her heart plummets to the rising bile of her roiling gut. Light washes through an open window, painting the room in gray silhouettes. Curtains billow, twirling evergreen gowns, exposing diaphanous white petticoats in a gothic scene opaque with death. A surreal reality she’d viewed once when Tessa freed her deceased husband’s spirit through the open window.

  She lowers her gaze from the window to the floor, pausing on the floral Asian rug, Tessa’s beige, fur-lined slippers are arranged side by side below the bed, accessible when she rises. Had she worn them today? Sky’s gaze creeps up the white bed skirt, remaining underneath the comforter’s evergreen horizon, below the unbearable truth, a reality she’s unprepared to swallow.

  Cristal Whelan lifts her watery gaze from the murky corner. Twyla, seated near the bed, turns her tear-stained face with pain plain on her face, as it had been with Ian’s death, evoking images of the puffy-eyed, wet-cheeked seven-year-old who’d cried herself to sleep when Riley, Charlie’s Labrador Retriever, died 13 years ago.

  Sky inhales and holds her breath, forcing her gaze toward Tessa’s motionless body on the canopy bed, hoping she’ll find her bedridden with the debilitating depression that sometimes hits her. Even with Cristal and Twyla’s solemn faces and the foreboding window, her mind grasps for another explanation. Sky’s gaze lands on Mystik sprawled on Tessa’s abdomen, her head on her lifeless chest. Tessa’s frozen serenity is death.

  “I’m too late,” escapes Sky’s lips barely a whisper, caught in the tremor rolling up her chest, shuddering her shoulders.

  Twyla leaps from the chair and rushes over, grasping Sky with a crushing squeeze.

  The question she’d pondered the entire day lies in front of her. Twyla hadn’t returned her call because she knew she’d abandon midterm exams and rush straight to the inn. At once, she realizes the warm breeze, inexplicable swell of emotions, and sharp pang she’d experienced that morning wasn’t a dream, but Tessa’s farewell embrace. The strange event in the cemetery becomes clear. It was Tessa, beautiful, youthful, bidding her a last farewell.

  Sky closes her eyes, freeing rivulets to her cheeks. She hugs Twyla tight, squashing a rising sob. In the black swirl of her eyelids, Tessa’s image in the graveyard ignites, imprinting on her mind with spectral lips voicing the last word she’d perceived. Here… With closed eyes, she pictures Tessa speaking, pointing her finger toward the family mausoleum, then her heart.

  Now, she understands the silent words in Tessa’s melodious voice. “You can always find me here.” And the seven words she’d spoken before, “My daughter, I’ll love you forever.”

  Ghostly Relics

  A Year Later

  “Revenants forever dwell at Twilight Ends,” Tessa and Ian Newhouse often claimed and joked about non-paying guests as if they were family. Although she’d never seen a ghost before her mom’s death, Sky had never doubted her parents. Her mother’s cemetery visitation confirmed a staunch belief she’d held since her 11th birthday, when spectral energy, too subtle to define, played a fine-pitched hum in her ears. Now, the constant vibrations are as natural as her heartbeat, low and steady most days and strong when Twilight’s active.

  During fearful moments, her father’s voice whispers enduring words of wisdom, forever rooted in her conscience. “Pay them no mind, and they’ll do the same. They’re echoes, traces of past occupants who can’t hurt you.” Though she’s tried darn hard to ignore them, Twilight’s invisible dwellers whisper without end. Even now, years later, she’s captive to their resonance as she stares around the dim room where her parents once slept. She never thought she’d live in her childhood home with her husband and daughter, a place imbued with gossamer voices she’d tried to silence for years. But with Tessa’s constant reminder, it was inevitable she’d inherit the business, regardless of whether she wanted it.

  She sighs and rises from bed before dawn breaks. Preoccupied with Tessa’s annual holiday ritual, she doesn’t notice the gusty wind around the house or the snowstorm outside the window. She leaves the family suite in pajamas, strolls barefoot across the shadowy second-floor corridor, descending the grand staircase to the aromatic main floor. She peers at the untrimmed balsam fir, inhales the pine infusing the area, then heads toward the cellar.

  It’s been a year since she assumed ownership of the inn, but she’s still uncertain of her new role as a B&B proprietor. She’d promised Tessa never to sell Twilight at any cost, and she won’t. As tenured professors, she and Charlie considered several options to preserve the thriving business, even hiring outside management. But with that choice, Sky swore she heard her parent’s disapproving voice, “A stranger managing our business! Now, that’s a dishonor to your family.” Quitting their tenured positions was not a choice, but a reduced course load to two days a week allowed them to forge new roles as innkeepers.

  Charlie assumed she could run the inn with her parent’s ability, given that she’d grown up there. She’d frowned, shaken her head and replied, “I wish that were true, but honestly, Charlie, I know little of running a bed-and-breakfast.” Over the years, she’d seen her parents manage the inn’s staff, cater to guests and plan holidays, weddings, and bridal specials. But she had no wish to follow in their footsteps. Her passion lay in teaching archaeology, unearthing ancient cultures on digs with her students. Regardless, her first allegiance remains with her family and Twilight Ends.

  Fraught with misgivings, Sky worries she’ll never fill her parent’s shoes or love the home as they had. Twyla, enthralled with the place, embraces the hospitality business. Most days, Sky goes through the motions, following Tessa’s detailed instructions on daily procedures. As a team, she, Charlie, and Twyla handle the business side, marketing, finance, and procurement. When Twyla graduated from the university, she assumed the role of guest relations as if she’d performed the job her entire life. Thank heavens for George, who’s been Twilight’s caretaker for as long as she can remember. Living in the two-story sentry bungalow on the property, he takes care of 40 acres without a hitch.

  Cora, Sadie, and Leila, the permanent staff of Twilight Ends, ease housekeeping pressure. Cora, the chef, prepares breakfast, lunch, and dinner when Charlie’s not intruding. Sadie and Leila handle housekeeping of 20 guest rooms in the main house, four bridal suites in the carriage house, including several rooms on the first floor and the renovated basement and gym. Years ago, Tessa arranged room and board for the caretaker, and always treated him as kin, not an employee. Old George and his son worked for Twilight for many years, but
Sky wonders if she’d confused him with a former caretaker. He can’t be the same man. She’s never inquired because it’s impossible he’s lived this long. She always believed her parents held Old George in great esteem because it’s Iroquois tradition to honor elders. Recently, she wonders if they revered him for other reasons.

  Sky’s garrulous father forever reminded her, “The family owns the sacred land Twilight sits on. Our Iroquois ancestors were native to Geneva ages before European settlers came.” He’d further clarified, “Sky, your bloodline is a hodgepodge of Iroquois, English and Scottish genes,” he’d said as he had many times, stroking her thick raven hair. When she married Charlie Ferguson, an African American, his speech prolonged. “Now the family blood’s all-American, red, white, and blue. But don’t forget your past, Sky. The Newhouse family holds a profound bond to the Seneca Wolf Clan, and this haunted terrain.”

  How could she forget either, especially with preternatural events at Twilight Ends? Many dawns and many nights, she’s sensed spirits roaming the inn. They’re imperceptible, but detectable to those with her proclivity. Often, Sky believes she’s the ghost inhabiting their space, invading their private sanctum.

  Disinclined to speak of the supernatural, Sky seldom does. Her obstinate, atheist husband doesn’t believe in ghosts and often says, “There’s no afterlife. When we die, that’s it.” But her receptive daughter is a believer. She suspects Twyla senses preternatural occurrences around the inn, but she’s hesitant to broach the topic unless someone else does.

  Caught between the living and dead, Sky wishes she could exist in the present as does her husband, with mere human concerns. But she’s not so lucky. Even now, as she searches the storage room for a box labeled First-Floor Christmas Ornaments, she detects their electrical presence, droning in the space.

  Years ago, she hoped the ever-so-slight hum in her ears was tinnitus. But doctors shattered that wish with multiple tests and a positive affirmation. Adamant, she’d exclaimed to several physicians, “My hearing’s not right,” and always received the same diagnosis, “Your hearing is normal.”